


life’s too short to worry about things we got wrong

by sunsxleil



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, F/M, MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE SEASON 3 FINALE, major spoilers for season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 13:39:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19724782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsxleil/pseuds/sunsxleil
Summary: MAJOR MAJOR SEASON 3 SPOILERSEven if they moved away, Joyce Byers made it a point to bring them back to Hawkins from time to time, just so the gang could come back together even for a while.It’s been two years, and the wounds are still fresh. But maybe that’s fine—so she let’s herself face her own wounds, finally, while the kids have fun together.





	life’s too short to worry about things we got wrong

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from the song Hug All Ur Friends by Cavetown, and the whole fic was kind of inspired by that song too. It kinda became my post-s3 comfort song, after _that_ finale.
> 
> Hope y’all like this :))

Joyce Byers takes this as a chance to sneak away.

El is with Mike, and they’re with the rest of the gang, sharing stories and swapping games and even trying out playing D&D with everyone included. Even Steve and Robin. And from what Joyce had overheard, it seems like Max is actually good at it, or maybe she just wants to beat the hell out of her boyfriend.

Joyce smiles, but.

But.

Jonathan and Nancy are outside, doing whatever it is that young adults do, and even after being there once, Joyce can’t quite remember how it is to be so free. Maybe because after all she’s been through, she’s forgotten what it feels to be so free.

Free from violent ex-husbands. Free from kidnapped sons. Free from eaten ex-boyfriends.

Joy smiles, but.

But.

She’s never free, especially not from him.

From a big, tall, moustache-d chief of police that nods to her from the other side of a visible electromagnetic field to _do it_ , and because she is strong and knows what needs to be done, because she knows there is more to the world that they fight for, she turns the keys in their slots.

Thunder rumbles above head.

She wishes the rain will fall soon. Wishes for the rain to fill the cracks in her heart, wishes the thunder to mask the breaking in her chest.

Joyce Byers gets into her car and starts the ignition. Sometimes, she wishes the engine would blow up in her face, just so she could jump out of the vehicle into a thick patch of woods, into where he is, his face fuming but looking at her.

But that was two years ago. All of it.

She drives off, sure that none of them will be looking for her until around dinnertime.

The sun is high in the sky but the storm clouds are rolling in. The world becomes dark. The air smells of rain.

* * *

They’ve closed off the area and put up a fence around it, but that doesn’t stop Joyce from finding an opening and entering. Trespassing—or maybe not, depending on who’s talking.

Is it trespassing to visit the grave of someone you love?

The place stands as it used to, ruins of another day, another time, another life from long, long ago. The kids told her about how the Mind Flayer had fallen in the middle of the mall when she closed the gate; she wonders what kind of sick joke that is, to have a mish mash of human-body-parts-turned-monster fall in a place where a mish mash of humans usually hung out.

She walks to the elevator slash storage room. It’s open.

She rides it down to the bottom level, where everything happened.

At least, everything for her, in those moments.

The long halls of pipelines and broken lights almost creep her out, almost haunt her enough to remind her of looking for Will in the Upside Down, or running down the halls of the old hospital where Bob died. Almost. And she almost thinks the pipelines are moving something beneath their cylindrical, steel exterior, but.

But.

But not even her instincts could detect anything but radio silence in the ruins of a life once lived, the ruins of the hell hole that they managed to fall into not once, not twice, but _thrice_. Her paranoia cannot win out on her this time, and she could almost be suspended in disbelief, expect for one reason.

When she walks, she keeps to one specific side, one specific part of the long, long hallways.

And at her side, or a Murray away from her, _was_ him.

The ache in her bones aren’t from tension, from fear that something will jump from around the corner and suck her soul right out of her mouth.

Her heart aches the most; the silence is somber, as if even the history of malice and bloodlust hanging in the air knows what she’s come here for, knows to keep itself from reining free for now.

She doesn’t take the vents. She doesn’t have to.

She walks straight on, through common areas and up staircases, the rubber of her soles colliding with steel and sending her footsteps echoing. Echoing to be heard by no one, no one but her—because who else is there to hear her shaking with held-back tears than herself and the ghost of the man she left here?

She reaches the control room. Wills herself not to spend another second regretting.

She had spent months beating herself up over not turning the keys as soon as they got it in. Encouraging and thinking that it was fine to have a countdown, even after Suzie-poo and Dustin had went off all four minutes or something just singing a duet.

Looking back, though, she couldn’t have done it differently. She can’t change it even if she could have done something else.

It’s done.

It’s over.

The ache in her heart tells her it’ll never be over. That even if it will fade from her memory, it will just be numbed, dulled, a sound muted from reverberating so much but still there, always there, always clanging around in her memories, resounding in her heart.

She walks up to the walkway where he stood. Where he was almost kicked into the machine. Where he had fought off that Russian guy against all odds and thrown the poor guy into the machine.

Joyce wants to be angry at Hopper for being the reason why he couldn’t run back to her in the first place.

But she can’t blame him. There was no other way. There never is.

And even if there was, it’s already done.

Already over.

It’s been two years.

She stands where he stood, and wonders.

Wonders what would’ve happened if he found a way out, if he’d grabbed her by the hand the way Murray had (but forcefully— _more_ forcefully—because Murray is gentle, and friendly, and reassuring; but she needs _his_ grip, _his_ forcefulness, _his_ relentless, wayward, angry grasp that is always firm, always locked on, a promise around her wrist—between her fingers and against her palm). She wonders what would’ve happened if they went on having dinner at Enzo’s on Friday, at seven, he picks her up and it would be a date. She wonders what life would’ve been like if she and the kids hadn’t moved out, if he could’ve persuaded her (as if she needed anymore persuasion with him around her, _always_ ) to stay.

She wonders, what his lips would taste like after years of grief and pills and alcohol, if he would taste the same as he did when they were young and carefree and full of nicotine. She wonders if they’d still love each other after two years, or if they’d already grow sick of each other and return to just being co-parents (because seven teenagers and four young adults are _just_ a _handful_ ).

She wonders if he’ll have asked her to marry him six months in, or if she’ll be the one sneaking in a ring in one of his ‘to be finished tomorrow night’ bags of chips with a note saying, ‘since you haven’t gotten the nerve to ask yet’.

She wonders if they’ll be better off one way or the other, or if they were really just damned to always be frustratingly close but impossible. Complicated. Not really any label imprinted on a human dictionary.

She wonders if he still loves her, wherever he is, just like she still loves him.

When she closes her eyes, the tears fall, and she imagines him brushing them away with the fat pad of his thumbs, gentle on her cheek, so unlike the force of it when he’s punching someone, all drunk on anger and rage. But with her, with her he is a lot more than anger issues. Or maybe that’s just because she’s much more fiercesome and relentless in her episodes of rage.

She leans into the touch she wishes were there, keeps her ears open for the voice she’s so bent on hearing again.

When she opens her eyes, he’s not there. And his voice never permeates the somber silence.

“Hey Hop,” and she talks to the floor, to the wall, to wherever he is, somehow here, somehow there, somehow around her, always, forever. “The kids are doing fine. El’s made some great friends in school actually.

“Will’s found himself a boyfriend, believe it or not. A cool skater dude that I almost disapproved of until Will brought him home one night and he cowered when he saw El.

“ _Cowered_ , would you believe it?”

And she talks to him, for the first time in two years, because last year, she only had enough strength to wear his clothes to sleep. Other than that, everything was all too fresh, all too painful.

She still smells him around her sometimes, a stray whiff of him. She’s sure it’s just her mind playing tricks on her, because the second time she sniffs, the scent would be gone, but that’s how it is when someone’s seared into your brain.

She hugs herself. The tears flow, and she doesn’t stop the sobs.

“I miss you, you know?” She could expound on that all she could. But he doesn’t need her to say more. Not if it’s something like this. “I miss you a lot.”

She waits for his voice to answer back to her. ‘I miss you too’ or something like that. But the seconds tick by with only her dropping tears to make a sound, and the somber silence closes around her. It will never stop hurting, she knows. Not for as long as she remembers him.

And she never, never, _never_ wants to forget him.

She walks out of the place the same way she came in, and by the time she comes back into daylight, the storm has descended. She runs to her car, letting the water seep into her bones as she runs a little slower, a little on purpose, a little not on accident.

She wills the rain to fill the cracks in her heart, and the thunder to mask the breaking in her chest. She turns the key as the lightning strikes. For a second there, she’s back in the control room with one hand wrapped around the belt and one hand desperately holding the other key.

This time, the tears don’t fall anymore. Just stray raindrops dripping down from her hair.

But just like last time, when the lightning goes away, there is nothing, no one, no eyes staring back at hers, no Jim Hopper telling her wordlessly that he loves her.

She drives back, and that’s when she knows it’s really all over. That there will be no more adventures, no more life-threatening, alien-induced situations, no more Demogorgons or Mind Flayers and no more of any of it.

There is only rain and phantom pain, humming in all the corners of her heart.

And there is Jim Hopper, in one of the corners of her heart, always watching her, the way they say it looks like when you’re in love.

When she gets back home, the kids smile sadly at her. They all know, all suspected, and she doesn’t fight them on it. She just smiles back, just as sadly if not sadder, and lets herself into her guest bedroom for a change of drier clothes.

No one comments on the button down shirt she changes into, the one that is two sizes too big for her but just right for _him_. When they all eat dinner, they talk like they always do, laugh like they always do, and for a few stolen moments, she sees shadows in some eyes too. But they’re here, together, and maybe that’s enough.


End file.
